Forsaken: The Edge of Everything

History

A Brief HistoryOf why things suck

Having won his bid for reelection, Barack Obama was assassinated on the steps of the Lincoln Monument. Joe Biden assumed the Presidency of the United States, but had neither the support of the conservative congress nor of the common people, many of whom bought into a slanderous rumor that Biden was somehow involved in the assassination.

So Biden was mostly a lame duck, unable to implement any economic recovery or corporate restructuring, which led to the Triple-Dip Recession of 2013, and ultimately The Second Depression in 2015. Heavy austerity measures in Europe, meanwhile, led to mass unemployment and a breakdown of social safety nets.

Citing the failures of first-world nations to provide a stable market, many companies pulled up stakes and moved to the third world, becoming the first Post-National Businesses. Those that remained in their countries of origin demanded, and were eventually granted, very low tax rates.

Joe Biden did not seek a second term and was succeeded by Paul Ryan, who dialed well back on both social safeguards and civil rights and sent another generation of Americans into The Three Wars in Aghhanistan, Iran, and North Korea.

And then the Asian market suddenly decided it wanted its share of the world’s oil and natural gas usage.

Pollution became a truly monstrous problem, blighting crops worldwide, and the price of energy skyrocketed to the point that electricity is now subject to rationing across most nations— a phenomenon called The Scarcities. Home computers and mobile phones have largely been abandoned by all but the wealthy. People barely use their cars anymore, riding commuter buses (or worse, packed into semi-trucks or freight trains) to what work they can find.

American society has become much more fractured, with a corrupt and ineffectual federal government trying to stay afloat as people answer more and more to their local power structure, be it civic or corporate. Businesses in the third world have been using private armies to enforce their claims, and domestic corporations have followed suit, replacing open office malls with subtly fortified compounds.

This is your world on The Edge of Everything. The waters are filthy and the air choked with soot. The government is failing. Women and minorities are being steadily stripped of rights, and the luxuries we took for granted are now luxuries indeed.

Some in the shadows weep, some laugh as the world circles the drain, and others simply see this as the necessary turning of the age. Those are the optimists.